Baseball Headline

Sunday June 10, 2012Gators Carry One Another...All The Way To Omaha

GAINESVILLE,
Fla. -- Amid the hugging and the jumping of Florida’s sweaty celebration,
senior Daniel Pigott sought out freshman and No. 9 hitter Josh Tobias, grabbed
his young teammate and pointing to the McKethan Stadium-Perry Field
scoreboard.

Specifically,
to the number 9, as in “Florida 9, North Carolina State 8.”

“Look at
that,” Pigott shouted in the mob scene. “That’s your run.”

Indeed,
Tobias was responsible for the eventual game-winner when he slapped a single to
give UF a 9-7 lead and what turned out to be the decisive insurance run against
an NC State squad that would not quit.

But
Tobias just as well could have been the one gushing on his teammate. It was
Pigott who led off the top of the 10th with a home run that just barely cleared
the right-field wall -- and the glove of leaping Wolfpack outfielder Brett
Austin -- to get the Gators in run-scoring, game-winning mode and close out a
second straight rain-delayed marathon; 6 hours and eight minutes worth, this
time.

Florida
had a chance to win it in the ninth when Tobias, after falling behind 0-2,
bombed a double into the right-center alley that centerfielder Jake Fincher
had, then didn’t.

“It
snow-coned on me,” Fincher said.

Two
sacrifices flies, the first by Preston Tucker and the second by Mike Zunino,
brought Tobias home with the go-ahead run (a 7-6 lead), but NC State tied the
game in the bottom of the ninth to kick the game into extra innings.

This
time, it was Pigott who got things going (like Tobias, with two strikes)
against Vance Williams, NC State’s fifth pitcher.

“I
thought as long as I got the barrel on the ball and put it in play, we’d have a
shot,” he said. “It felt good coming off ... and it just kept carrying and
carrying.”

His
third homer of the season gave Florida an 8-7 lead.

Freshman
Casey Turgeon, who had three hits on the day, followed with a single to left
and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt. Vickash Ramjit lined to short,
bringing Tobias to the plate.

“I
wasn’t going to do anything different, even though it was a big situation,” he
said. “I just took a deep breath, fouled a couple off and when he made a
mistake, I made him pay for it.”

Tobias
lashed a single between the first and second baseman, plating Turgeon with the
inning’s second run. Though Tobias got caught in a run-down that ended the
inning, he’d done his job.

How big
was that run?

NC State
put runners on second and third in the bottom of the 10th, but only got one run
home, thanks to Keenan Kish, who put down both batters he faced -- striking out
Chris Diaz looking to end the game -- for his first save of the season

“It was
a total team effort, but Josh had some great at-bats,” Coach Kevin O’Sullivan said
of Tobias, who missed more than a month of the season with a broken bone in his
hand. “So did Preston and Daniel and obviously Casey.”

That’s
what this team does.

"When
someone needs to get another guys back, we do that," Pigott said. "We
carry each other."

As a UF
recruit, Tobias watched the Gators clinch their CWS berth under O'Sullivan in
2010, and as a freshman at Summer “A” session did the same from his dorm room
in 2011. This time, he was in the middle of it all.